大象传媒

In the third of ten programmes tracing a century of black British theatre and screen, Lenny Henry uses Shakespeare's character of Othello to tell the story of how the Moor of the play has for nearly 200 years offered black actors a part to savour - and also provoked debates about who can play the role.

In 2009, Lenny himself took the role in a production by Northern Broadsides at the West Yorkshire Playhouse in Leeds, and subsequently in London. It won him the Evening Standard newspaper's Newcomer of the Year award, and was generally acknowledged a triumph.

Yet nearly 200 years ago, in 1833, the black American-British actor Ira Aldridge (known as 'the negro tragedian') played Othello with the Covent Garden players for just two nights until deplorable racist reviews, objecting to "this wretched upstart", forced the management to close the production.

Even well into the twentieth century, those 19th century newspapers' complaints about Desdemona being 'pawed' by a black actor were echoed when the great Paul Robeson took the role, and white actors in blackface have regularly played Othello right up to the modern era.

Featuring an interview with Lolita Chakrabarti, whose award-winning play Red Velvet, depicted Aldridge's Othello.

Series Consultant Michael Pearce
Producer Simon Elmes.